Supreme Court upholds educational qualification as criterion to contest Haryana Panchayat Polls [Read Judgment]

The Supreme Court today upheld the law laying down education qualifications for contesting Panchayat polls in Haryana. The Court has dismissed the petition challenging the law made by the State government in that regard..The judgment was delivered by a Division Bench comprising Justice Jasti Chelameswar and Justice Abhay Manohar Sapre..The case was a challenge to the Constitutionality of Haryana Panchayati Raj (Amendment) Act, 2015 (Act) which mandates that those contesting Panchayat polls should have passed the 10th standard. For persons belonging to Scheduled caste community and for women, the requirement is passing the 8th standard. For women belonging to Schedule caste desirous of contesting for the post of Panch, the threshold was even lower – 5th standard pass..Besides educational qualification, the Act also disqualified the following categories of persons for contesting elections: (i) persons against whom charges are framed in criminal cases for offences punishable with imprisonment for not less than ten years, (ii) persons who fail to pay arrears, if any, owed by them to either a Primary Agricultural Cooperative Society or District Central Cooperative Bank or District Primary Agricultural Rural Development Bank, (iii) persons who have arrears of electricity bills, (iv) persons not having a functional toilet at their place of residence..The petitioners had contended that these provisions are violative of Article 14 of the Constitution on the ground that the same are arbitrary and create a classification which do not have any reasonable nexus to the object sought to be achieved..When the Act was challenged before the Supreme Court, a stay had been granted. Subsequently, the Haryana government had deferred the Panchayat elections till the pronouncement of the judgment by the Supreme Court..Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi had represented the Haryana government in the case while Advocate Kirti Singh had represented the petitioner. Senior Advocate Indira Jaising and Rajinder Sachar and Advocate Sanjay Parikh had appeared for an intervener..The Court in its judgment addressed the Constitutionality of the provision prescribing education qualification at length. The impugned provision was inserted in the Haryana Panchayati Raj Act as Section 175(v) and creates two classes of voters – those who are qualified by virtue of their educational accomplishment to contest the elections to the Panchayats and those who are not. The Court held that,.“The proclaimed object of such classification is to ensure that those who seek election to Panchayats have some basic education which enables them to more effectively discharge various duties which befall the elected representatives of the Panchayats. The object sought to be achieved cannot be said to be irrational or illegal or unconnected with the scheme and purpose of the Act or provisions of Part IX of the Constitution. It is only education which gives a human being the power to discriminate between right and wrong, good and bad. Therefore, prescription of an educational qualification is not irrelevant for better administration of the Panchayats. The classification in our view cannot be said either based on no intelligible differentia unreasonable or without a reasonable nexus with the object sought to be achieved.”.Regarding the provision prescribing a functional toilet at the residence as a condition for contesting elections, the Court held that it was to prevent practice of open defecation, a practise widely prevalent in the country. It held that if the State legislature “stipulates that those who are not following basic norms of hygiene are ineligible to become administrators of the civic body and disqualifies them as a class from seeking election to the civic body, such a policy, cannot be said to be create a class based on unintelligible criteria nor can such classification be said to be unconnected with the object sought to be achieved by the Act.”.“It is unfortunate that almost a hundred years after Gandhiji started such a movement, India is still not completely rid of such practice. The reasons are many. Poverty is one of them. However, this unhealthy practice is not exclusive to poorer sections of rural India. In a bid to discourage this unhealthy practice, the State has evolved schemes to provide financial assistance to those who are economically not in a position to construct a toilet. As rightly pointed by the respondents, if people still do not have a toilet it is not because of their poverty but because of their lacking the requisite will. One of the primary duties of any civic body is to maintain sanitation within its jurisdiction. Those who aspire to get elected to those civic bodies and administer them must set an example for others. To the said end if the legislature stipulates that those who are not following basic norms of hygiene are ineligible to become administrators of the civic body and disqualifies them as a class from seeking election to the civic body, such a policy, in our view, can neither be said to create a class based on unintelligible criteria nor can such classification be said to be unconnected with the object sought to be achieved by the Act.”.The Court also turned down the challenge to the provisions which disqualify person having arrears of electricity bills and persons who owe money to co-operative societies and banks set out in Section 175(t).